Epic Destinies

Raaawwrrrr!!

It’s always fun to use iconic monsters as the big baddie in an adventure. There’s just something *incredibly* satisfying at bringing a Dragon miniature from behind the DM screen and watching your players going; “Oh Shi…”

But the solo encounters in the first Monster Manual are a bit lacking, even some of the solos in MM2 and other supplements just don’t have the right…tone to them for me. A lot of solo’s can turn into slug-fests and really slow down, it ends up being the same thing over and over for a good 300 hitpoints worth of damage.

So when I knew I wanted to be a young dragon solo into my Eberron game, I picked up my Monster Builder and some notepaper and got to work.

To give you some background, I wanted an encounter at the end of my “prologue” to be a “big bad guy” encounter. As the Chamber features in my campaign I wanted to have them go toe to toe with a young, rash but still dangerous acolyte dragon of the Chamber. But the dragons in the Monster Manual just seemed… a bit boring, even the ones in MM2 couldn’t grab my interest.

I got some inspiration from a friend for the environment which would make the fight more fun, but I still felt like the monster itself needed something… memorable.

Something came to me whilst talking to a friend, a hardcore World of Warcraft friend that is. He was talking about the various raid bosses in WoW and the various phases and methods required to beat them.

Phases you say?

A monster changes into a very different style of monster through a battle. Tactics need to change on the fly, things are exciting again…

Perfect.

There are already some great monsters that change dramatically when bloodied, but I wanted to go a few steps beyond that. I decided my Solo Dragon would have four phases, each one with a different “type” of monster.

One brute, one controller, one artillery and one striker.

The easiest way I thought of doing this was to build a basic skeleton of stats. Each separate dragon would have the same hitpoints, defences and attack bonuses as each other, effectively one monster with four sets of attack powers each tailored to a different type.

Now in hindsight, this wasn’t perfect. Four phases was possibly too many and certain phases just didn’t last long enough (Although this might have been due to the Warlord’s well timed attack but more on that in a moment). But then there was a lot of stuff that did work, the two best phases where the ones where my Dragon took flight summoning minions and grabbing enemies with flyby attacks and then crushing them (And then dropping the Paladin to do even more damage).

It was a fun encounter for everybody, my players enjoyed the variety and having to think of interesting tactics and I enjoyed getting to pull out a new card as they fought each new phase. I mixed it in with a lot of roleplaying as well, the villain getting angrier and angrier to the point of disbelief that he could be defeated by these wretched mortals.

Our female fighter had such a bad time rolling the whole fight, she got it back in spades when she lept onto the back of the dragon and rolled a crit on her Daily Power. Always nice to see a player get some good karma.

Here’s a couple of the phases I did for my BBEG; Garos Flamedrinker;

————-

Garos Flamedrinker – Phase 2 Level 4 Solo Brute

Large natural magical beast XP 875

Initiative +5 Senses Perception +9; darkvision

HP 200; Bloodied 100 (See Phases)

AC 18; Fortitude 20; Reflex 16; Will 18

Resist 15 fire

Saving Throws +5

Speed  6 , Fly 6 (hover)

Action Points 2

Bite (standard; at-will) • Fire

Reach 2; +7 vs AC; 1d8 + 3 damage plus 1d6 fire damage

Claw (standard; at-will)

Reach 2; +7 vs AC; 1d8 + 5 damage

Flame Burst (standard; encounter) • Fire

Area burst 1 within 10; +5 vs Reflex; 1d8 + 4 fire damage, and the target is dazed (save ends)

Fire Stream (standard; at-will) • Fire

Ranged 5; +5 vs Reflex; 1d8 + 5 fire damage. Effect: Each creature adjacent to the target takes 1d8 fire damage

Summon Flame Minions (minor; encounter)

Garos summons 6 Flame Minions in a burst 3 within 10, these minions roll initiative and act on their turn

Phases (When Garos takes 50 points of damage)

When Garos takes 50 points of damage in this form, move onto Phase 3.

Alignment Evil Languages Draconic

Skills Athletics +12, Bluff +10, Insight +10

Str 18 (+6) Dex 12 (+3) Wis 14 (+4)

Con 18 (+6) Int 16 (+5) Cha 16 (+5)

© 2009 Wizards of the Coast LLC, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. All rights reserved. This monster statistics block has been generated using the D&D Adventure Tools.

—————————

Garos Flamedrinker – Phase 3 Level 4 Solo Brute

Large natural magical beast XP 875

Initiative +5 Senses Perception +9; darkvision

HP 200; Bloodied 100 (See Phases)

AC 18; Fortitude 20; Reflex 16; Will 18

Resist 15 fire

Saving Throws +5

Speed  6 , Fly 6 (hover)

Action Points 2

Bite (standard; at-will) • Fire

Reach 2; +7 vs AC; 1d8 + 3 damage plus 1d6 fire damage

Flyby Attack (standard; recharge 5 6)

The dragon flies up to 10 squares and makes a bite attack at any point during the move without provoking an opportunity attack from the target. Or Garos may make a Claw Grab attack instead,but provokes an opportunity attack from the target.

Claw Grab (standard; at-will)

Reach 2; +7 vs AC; 1d8 + 6 damage, and the target is grabbed. Usuable only whilst Garos does not have a creature grabbed. Any foe held when Garos turns to Phase 4 is automatically dropped.

Crush (minor; at-will)

Grabbed target only; +5 vs Fortitude; 2d8 + 4 damage

Fire Blast (standard; at-will) • Fire

Area burst 1 within 10; +5 vs Reflex; 1d6 + 2 fire damage

Phases (When Garos takes 50 points of damage)

When Garos takes 50 points of damage in this form, move onto Phase 4.

Alignment Evil Languages Draconic

Skills Athletics +12, Bluff +10, Insight +10

Str 18 (+6) Dex 12 (+3) Wis 14 (+4)

Con 18 (+6) Int 16 (+5) Cha 16 (+5)

© 2009 Wizards of the Coast LLC, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. All rights reserved. This monster statistics block has been generated using the D&D Adventure Tools.

————-

Hmmm, I hope that’s okay for me to put up…

Anyway, that should give you a rough idea of how I used the idea of “phases” for this boss fight. It’s definitely something I recommend for the “big” baddies in your game, especially solo’s with lots of hitpoints.

Of course, if you have a Tactical Warlord in the party and they managed to hit with a “Lead the Attack” giving the entire party a +5 bonus to attack rolls for the whole encounter… Well, it get’s a bit easy for them…

Bloody Warlord… I’ll get him next time!

A lot of people turn their noses up at it, but I think games like World of Warcraft have a lot of good ideas we can incorporate into D&D. Especially in the end-game raids. The boss fights are challenging and interesting from a design point of view. Next time I have a big custom fight like this one, I am going to use some other WoW mechanics and see how they go, I’ll let you know how it goes.

Alright, time’s up. Let’s do this.

LEEEEEEEEEEEROOOOOOOOOOY JEEEEEEEENNNKKIIIIINNNSSSS!